


Simulation One: Primeval

by HawkTooth



Series: The Travelers [1]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies), Primeval, Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Crossover, F/M, Friendship, Humor, Simulation, just for fun, mild romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:35:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25586809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HawkTooth/pseuds/HawkTooth
Summary: Sometimes there are adventures that you want to take that your actual path in life would never allow. It's the reason we all love fictional stories and immersing ourselves in those worlds. So what if you could actually jump into those tales, live in and affect them and how they turn out?Thanks to a certain book-smart dinosaur, this group has figured out how: enter the Travelers System. Following the events of the Two Worlds Collide Series, Hawken, Hiccup, Holly, Nick, Judy and the rest of the Riders are ready for a different, less serious (supposedly) set of adventures, delving into the stories that didn't manage to already twine into their real lives and that can be lived without worry of real consequences. Care to join?These are tales for those who love to see characters in worlds not  their own, the crossover geeks and those who just like to watch ridiculous interactions and live-in-the-story tales; there's no knowing where this'll go, only that it's going somewhere fun.
Relationships: Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III & Original Character(s), Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III & Toothless, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III/Astrid Hofferson, Judy Hopps & Nick Wilde, Judy Hopps/Nick Wilde, Toothless (How to Train Your Dragon) & Original Character(s)
Series: The Travelers [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1854520
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to another series! As you might have picked up from the summary, it's best to at least skim through the Two Worlds Collide books to know how this mishmash of characters has come to dwell together in the first place, but if you don't want to busy with that, here's a short and dirty spit cover: a rift crossing between our real world and that of Hiccup's has allowed people from both sides to interact, in particular one young man gifted after its discovery with draconic abilities and his family. A long and tumultuous supernatural history in Hiccup's world has brought them into conflict with a diverse array of antagonists stemming from multiple other fictional tales or worlds that turned out to have life in some form on that earth. In one of the last major conflicts the Berkian-associated team gained help from a couple inhabitants of a continent sporting a version of the Narnian civilizations that happened to have given rise to a storyline not dissimilar to that of Zootopia's and many of the characters seen within; thus Nick and Judy joined the Riders, finishing out the diverse group.  
> Now here we are, ready to take a handful of those friends with severely disparate origins and run off in a whole new direction with them, purely for the fun of it. Expect lots of gaffs, sarcasm, pointed puns and situational humor, enough seriousness stemming from the worlds they'll be exploring to keep it hopefully properly interesting, and probably a fair amount of twisting away from the original plotlines of the stories these will be modeled from. First though, a short introduction to get the ball rolling; after all, we need a little more on exactly what is going into the function of the Travelers System itself:

“System ready?”

“Check.”

“Simulation plugged in?”

“Check.”

“Neuro-muscular interceptor ready?”

“Check.”

“Alright. Neural accelerator tested?”

“Also check.”

“…Let’s do this then!”

There was a slight flash, a moment of directional disorientation, and suddenly I was no longer lying on a recliner in my basement; or, at least not perceiving such.

Instead, before me was spread what looked perfectly like the African eastern plains as I stood upon what looked like the slopes of Mount Kenya. The breeze felt real, sun on my skin, the smells and sounds reaching my senses with nothing to hint that anything was off about it. I reached down and pinched myself hard enough to draw blood, noting the pain and red fluid that welled up, before testing healing the little wound. Just like that, gone, as it was supposed to be too.

“Good,” I muttered, glancing about again. “Checks out so far; alright, let’s look at the details.” With a grin I leapt upward, wings snapping out and catching the wind, and I glided down the slope, eyes sharpening to pick out the textures of rocks, grasses, trees, and then animal life as it flashed by below me. Had I not known already, this would have struck me as really being all alive and in person.

I spent a measured out hour gliding across Africa, testing ability after ability and checking out not only the natural world but also the villages, cities, and reactions of the people that I came across. Nothing stood out of place; as promised, Zipeau really had ironed out everything we could think up, and quite possibly had outdone all of our expectations. Satisfied, I landed, demorphed, and looked around one last time before concentrating hard and closing my eyes.

 _Okay then, let’s head back_.

The world spun again, and just as quickly came to a halt as my eyes snapped open, taking in the view of the unfinished ceiling of my basement again. I blinked, just to make sure, moments before a scaly green snout loomed into view.

“That was, uh, rather short-lived,” Zipeau commented, jotting down notes on his tablet. “Everything working alright in there, or any glitches cut it short?”

“Uh, I wouldn’t call that short,” I replied, sitting up and taking off the headset that had connected me to the simulating system before following suit on the sensory patches we’d attached to the rest of me. “I checked the watch you programmed for me in there, one hour almost to the minute according to what I measured. Why, how long was it out here?”

“An _hour_?” Zipeau’s eyes brightened, and he scribbled even faster on his screen. “That’s…that’s better than the projections, fantastic! You were only out for about five actual seconds.”

“Five sec…you sure?”

“Absolutely. The accelerator is working perfectly; sensors across your body didn’t detect anything odd either, like you were just in a deep dream.”

I nodded slowly, and then grinned. “So, what you’re telling me is,” I drawled, “the simulator’s finally working perfectly!” I stood up, and held out a hand for the dinosaur to shake. “I think we might just be ready to run forward with this then! Want to set up a real adventure then, and I’ll go find the others?”

Zipeau grimaced, and held up a finger rather than accept the handshake. “Uh, let’s not be hasty” he said cautiously. “I’d rather run at least one more test just to be sure. Maybe something a touch longer and a little more complex than basically a safari? Then I think it might be ready. Oh, but, let’s also limit the first party in, no more than ten participants?”

I nodded agreement, and settled back down in the chair we’d set out before slipping the headset back on and reattaching the sensors. “Yeah, safety first is good,” I agreed. “The tests are short in real life anyway; one more should clear everything up. Set up something like a gang fight in Chicago then; I’ll work it over for a simulated day or two, stuff like that is always messy in reality anyway.”

“Got it. And we can get the first adventure ready tomorrow perhaps.”

I gave a smile and a thumbs-up. “Perfect. I’ve already got the setting in mind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now, we can start having fun.  
> If you're not familiar with the show this book will be taking its premise from, I strongly suggest looking into the BBC series Primeval. I won't give up too much here and now, but if you like the notions of messing with time, dangerous animals, and a whole lot of government conspiracy, you'll probably enjoy it (and this developing spinoff story too, hopefully).  
> And until next time, HawkTooth out!


	2. Off to Another World We Go!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, first official chapter! I hate these start-up ones I have to write before getting to better tales, so bear with me...and laugh with me at the quirkiness of it all.

“Holly? Hey, you in-?”

I stuck my head into my sister’s room, expecting to find her lounging on her bed after her working weekend. Instead, in her place was an oversized fox in slacks and a tacky blue tropical print shirt. Quirking an eyebrow, I folded my arms as I stepped further into the room and he turned away from his phone to look up at me.

“You know she’s going to kill you the moment she finds a single red hair on her pillows, right?”

“One of the many benefits of my daily grooming,” Nick pandered back, rolling to lay flat on his back and crossing his legs. “Keeps the random shedding down to nil most of the year so Holly-berry is never the wiser.”

“Uh huh; she’ll kill you if she hears you call her that, too. And, uh, if you don’t shed, pray tell what that is?” I pointed past his head, to the solitary strand of burnt orange sitting on the top of Holly’s pillow, just as I had predicted.

Nick turned lazily to look, and I watched as he went from devil-may-care to panic in a heartbeat.

“Yahhh! Dammit; jeez, just how good _are_ your eyes?”

“If I morph Griffin I can track a housefly at almost a quarter mile.”

I leaned against the frame of the doorway and watched in amusement as the tod scrambled to pick the hair (and a couple of others as he sat up that made themselves known) up and then vacate the mattress, before I asked, “Well, since she’s clearly not here –and I advise you asking her permission before entering her room at all next time, because I will rat on you- where is sister dearest, or Judy for that matter?”

Nick pointed out the window. “Off on a spin with Nara; they’ll be back in about ten minutes or so if they don’t lose track of time again.” Then he glanced back at me, eyes narrowing in curiosity. “Why? Need them for something?”

I grinned as I turned away, motioning for him to follow through the house. “Actually, I’m looking for them, you, Hiccup and Astrid whom we can go find now if the other two are busy, and the dragons they’re usually with. Big announcement to make when we’re all together.”

The fox’s eyes sparked and he trailed along rapidly, rubbing his paws together. “Ooh, now I’m truly intrigued,” he said, tail flicking in curiosity. “Tell me now?”

“Uh, no. All at once.”

“Aw, come on!”

* * *

“Alright, so you’ve gathered us all together here, for what?” Astrid asked, crossing her arms and looking about the add-on (a new portion of the house that had become necessary when the fox and rabbit pair moved in more permanently). Zipeau and I had moved the system to where we could actually fit a bunch of people and dragons comfortably (the cramped basement would never do), and as he fired up the software and finished plugging in the simulation, I grinned and gestured a hand toward him.

“Well, Zipeau here has finally finished a software interface system that could potentially revolutionize the development of virtual reality,” I explained, picking up the first of the connected headsets and handing it to Holly, then the next to Hiccup, Nick, Astrid, and so on. “That is, if we actually decide to release it to the public; it’s kind of a special thing to run right. Welcome, officially, to the first real unveiling of the Travelers System. We’ve already tested it to make sure everything was spick and span, and our first adventure is programmed in and ready to go. Care to join me?”

“Wait, so, when you say virtual reality, you mean like a video game?” Nara queried as she looked over Holly’s shoulders at the headsets Holly was holding for the two of them. “I’m not seeing any goggles for it.”

“No, uh, this is a little more advanced than that,” Zipeau added in. He pointed to the tips of the headset nearest him, in Judy’s paws. “These are sensors that work in tandem with your neural circuit, and inhibit brain-body interaction so that you don’t hurt yourself while in one of the simulations. It’ll be, rather literally, like dropping into another world, another life.” He typed a little more on the screen he was working on, then continued, “If you’re worried though, unlike that Framework idea the Marvel shows used I hardwired individual control to enter and exit on your own; there’s no means to get locked in, though I caution that if you leave while a simulation’s still running and you were in a group, you can’t get back in until everyone exits.”

“Wait, why not?” Judy asked. She held up the headset. “We can’t just put these back on?”

“No, because it also speeds up time perception;” Zipeau explained. “Hawken and I calculated it while he was in the tests, five or so seconds real-time will equal an hour in there. Being out for even a minute or two and then jumping back in would be like blinking out of existence and then just showing up, potentially in an uncomfortable spot depending on what the others are doing, in there., and I haven’t had time to even try working a mid-simulation entry code.”

“But,” I jumped in, “we could basically live out an entire TV series or string of films or what have you and spend only hours, maybe a day or two, in there, for anyone in the long haul. Great chance for an escape from a job for a bit, or from parenting troubles, and so on.” At the last bit I gave a wink to Toothless and Amethyst, both of whom caught the look and immediately shoved their heads into the headsets that I held out for them.

“Don’t care where we’re going, but let’s go!” Amethyst chirped, to all our amusement.

“Gee, have the kids been that bad recently?” Nick chuckled, earning pointed looks from both dragons.

The others were still a bit less convinced. “Yeah, so, I assume you brought us all here because we’re invited to go to the first whatever you’ve set up,” Astrid drawled, looking still skeptically at the headset. “But, before I agree, what did you plug in as the adventure?”

I grinned. “You all remember that BBC series Holly and I are into, Primeval? We’ve got the simulation set to start in at about the end of episode 3.”

Holly’s headset was on a half second later, and then one by one I saw smiles pop up as the others shrugged and slipped theirs on to follow. “Ah, what the hell, why not?” Hiccup joked as he put his on. “If we wanna bail it’s not hard, right?”

“If,” I agreed, putting my set on and making sure it was comfortably secured. “But I’ll bet it’s a big if once things get going there. Now, people –and mammals- in the chairs, dragons get curled up comfortably, and let’s get this party started!” I settled back next to both Holly and Nick, and then looked over to Zipeau. “Got the house ready?”

“Yes, and programmed to start you all there. Backgrounds and resources as well, as we discussed.”

I raised a thumbs-up. “Perfect. Okay, everyone, relax, close your eyes, and…”

* * *

And the world felt like it was spinning, twisting around me, before stopping short and resetting rapidly on a very, very different environment.

We were standing (well, those that remained standing) on a driveway, a long winding dirt path ending at a large, spaciously-roomed house about thirty yards away. In every direction were trees, trees, more trees, cloaked in a light fog. Perfect.

Everyone else looked a whole lot less sure of themselves. Stumbling as they tried to regain their sense of balance –both Nick and Amethyst had hit the dirt and were staggering back up- they looked about in abject confusion.

“Okay, what…?” Nick sputtered, ears high and nose twitching rapidly as he gained his senses. “Uh…sure you didn’t just create a new teleporter system or something? You know, Loki-style tech?” He took in a big breath, and looked at me. “Even smells like the forests in the north of Narnia!” Then he turned and took in the house, as others started to do the same. “Though, I do love the modernized décor. Where are we, really?”

“It’s the Travelers System as I told you,” I replied with a smirk, crossing my arms. “And told you it was good. Modified simulation of the real world down to the smallest details we could manage –that includes feeling pain, I can see the thought in your head Nick so I’d recommend against pinching yourself- and we’re standing on what, in here at least, is our land on the eastern edge of the Forest of Dean, just west of Gloucester, England.” I unfolded my arms and pointed to the house, adding, “Call that home base, just for us to have a place to be when we’re not helping –or bothering perhaps, we’ll see how it goes- Nick Cutter and his associates here. Welcome to the world of Primeval.”

“Wait, hold on,” Holly interjected, holding out her arms in a “pause” fashion. She turned then and pointed toward the house, drawing everyone’s eyes, and then looked at me. “Are you saying that while we’re in here, _that_ place is where we’re living?”

My grin grew. “Uh huh. Fully stocked for now, though we may have to shop, and we’ve got some pretty deep accounts to our names while we’re here so this can just be for”-

“I call dibs on that room with the big window!” Holly interrupted, dashing for the house without waiting for anyone else to catch up.

“Hey, hold on! No getting calls before us!” Judy yelled and took after her with Nick shortly behind them. I watched them all go, my own amusement growing, before turning toward Hiccup, Astrid, and the four reptilian members of the party. Clearly, they still needed some explanations if their perplexed expressions were anything to go by.

“If we’re really in the Primeval world, then there is an issue with some of us here,” Astrid noted, jerking her thumb between the dragons. “Those of us who have dragons with us”-

“Or are dragons, mind you,” Amethyst added, looking over at her.

“-Right, anyway, everyone around here is gonna probably freak out just as bad as they do with the animals this show is all about when they find out, won’t they?”

“Part of the fun perhaps, if you will,” I said, “and a reason I got our house set up where it is here. Nobody around for a ways to see them stretching their wings nearby, and if and when we need some aerial help with the intrusions, we can play hide and seek through the whole damn forest. You’ll notice too, if you look at what you’re wearing,” and I paused so they could look down at their outfits, not quite the ones they “fell asleep” in but familiar, “we were programmed in here to have our suits and weapons etc. at the ready. The ones you’re not wearing are in the armory in the house, too by the way. And,” I paused again to point by my ear as my communications headset materialized, “that includes our coms, so we can stay in touch, and the barrier gems etc. if we really need them. Had Zipeau program plenty of extras just in case something happens to them too, though I hope we’ll keep the same policy as we do in reality on that. I’ll get the map out later too; we’re rather central in the playout area for the series.”

I turned and pointed off to the east, above the treetops and in the rough direction our driveway wound toward. “For us, London is a fifteen-minute cloaked flight that way. Behind us is forest and farmland, to the south is ocean, and so on. Now again, we’re here to have some fun, run along with the series’ storyline more or less –or change what we can too. So,” I turned back again and gestured for them to follow me toward the house, where the other three had already left the very large front door open. “Come on, let’s get settled in, and then I can lay out where we go from here. If the timing is right, we’ll be catching the Primeval team right as they really start getting settled into their roles.”

“Sounds good,” Toothless said, bounding up next to me, before his ears flicked forward when we heard shouts from inside. “Oh; you tried labeling the rooms already, didn’t you?”

“Uh huh.” I grimaced, suddenly realizing my misjudgment. “I knew that they were going to try fighting over the rooms, and also trying to move the stone slabs for you guys,” I nodded my head toward the dragons, “from one place to another would be a pain, so I put names on the doors for now…”

The yelp of a fox somewhere inside followed by a thud made me wince, and Astrid smirked as she reached the door, pushing it further open and then looking over her shoulder at me. She called back, “Something tells me that you’re moving Nara’s bed to a new room. That, or win a fight with your sister.”

“…Yeah, I’ll go move it now…”

* * *

An hour later, and all was finally well in our simulated household. Or, as well as it could be with our motley crew; they were convinced of the setup and its impressive approximation of reality, and stocked up on the tools they thought they’d need for that day. We gathered up again in the main living room after checking out the grounds (even I, despite having a hand in the design, hadn’t actually seen the place yet), and I flattened out a map alongside a rough list of corresponding events that would come up in the series.

“As we speak, the end of episode three is playing out down here,” I explained, pointing to a line in one of London’s suburbs. “Cutter’s going to be returning through the oceanic anomaly in the house basement in an hour or so, and the military team is gonna drag Helen back shortly after. We’ve got two main options to start getting involved: A, try and talk to Cutter after Helen’s brought back, or B, try and deal with Lester and company by dropping the bomb that we know about Helen and the anomalies to the local government.”

“I’d vote for talking to the other Nick in this story,” Nick chimed in with his standard leer. “Less risk of getting on the government’s bad side the wrong way and better chance we can run off to the dodo party without guns at our heads right away. Or, we at least drag him into the mess with us and get a buffer.” Then his smile dropped, and he glanced at Judy and then down to himself. “But, uh, one other big issue to combat: I hope you don’t expect Carrots and I to hang back with the dragons until something big blows up and you need a talking animal reveal. I don’t know about you but I’m not good with just hanging in the forest here for a few weeks first. How we planning to hide the two of us in public?”

“We don’t,” I replied, to which everyone looked at me like I’d grown two heads. Actually, that wasn’t entirely unusual anymore; like I’d just announced I was getting rid of my whole plant collection, perhaps. “At least, not entirely. Catch.”

I pulled a pair of small black boxes out of my pocket and tossed them over, the two mammals catching them with ease. When they naturally didn’t figure out my plan after looking the devices over, I continued, “Power cells for you guys to draw from, charged by solar or the nearest socket and they pack a punch so careful. Make a hologram, a pair of people to replace a pair of mammals. It’ll need a bit of concentration to maintain, but I’m sure you two can manage that while we’re running about with the other folks.”

Toothless snorted, looking up over Hiccup’s shoulder at them. “Oh, this should be good,” he drawled. “Pick a good look for the holograms at least; none of those ‘anime humanized’ versions will you?”

Nick stuck his tongue out at the big reptile, before he and Judy clipped the little boxes onto the belts on their suits and focused. It took a few seconds, then a ripple in the air could be seen as the mild electric current ran out and coalesced in a shell around each of them. Flickers and flashes of color appeared as the pair concentrated on how to frame a human version of themselves, and make it decently match their actions as well as feel real, and then…

“Hhh yeah, okay,” Holly chuckled uncertainly, eyes sweeping up and down the view before us. “We’re only having you guys do this out in public. Not here, or when with anyone who knows. That just looks…really weird.”

I couldn’t disagree. Where the red fox and rabbit stood, in their place were a slightly taller guy and girl in the same suits and bearing an uncanny reminiscence of the species they hid if you knew what you were looking at. The expressions and, as Nick and Judy tested motions, their mannerisms, too, were a match to a T. The redhead with green eyes and a lanky build not unlike mine and Hiccups held a smirk that couldn’t be mistaken, and the silver-brown haired woman with violet-touched blue eyes had that enthusiastic spark and determined air the original rabbit overflowed with.

It would certainly work though; to anyone but me (I could see through the field if I tried, draconic senses and whatnot) it was just another pair of odd people to fit in with the rest of us oddballs, and I could tell it wasn’t taking much from the duo to keep the illusions going once they got it figured out. But it was way too uncanny-valley to use it when not necessary.

“Alright, just one more test and we’ll start this adventure off,” I said, holding up my hand and focusing. “Though Zipeau and I tweaked the series a little to make a couple details fit more with real-life physics and all, the anomalies are still highly electromagnetic so we’ve gotta make sure the holograms can stay up around them if needed.” Around my hand a similar magnetic field built up, and just as I had suspected when I pushed it toward the unprepared pair the holograms warped toward the wield.

“Whoa,” Judy exclaimed, her hologram looking down at its bending hands and chest, but then her face screwed into a concentrated scowl, and after a couple of glitches the image started to twist back to normal. “Okay, so, a little more concentration around the anomalies to counter the effects,” she mused, looking over to Nick who was following her example and straightening out his own image. “But I think we’ve got it.”

“Fantastic,” Hiccup said, a grin of his own forming. He adjusted the straps on a couple of his pockets, then checked to make sure the equipment he thought he’d need for the day was in place and jerked a thumb toward the door. His eyes flicked over everyone one by one, then to me. “Shall we, then? The party’s already started right?”

I nodded. “Absolutely. Let’s go see what mischief we can get into.”

* * *

What was the word for moments like this? Betrayal sounded about right.

As he watched the military squad push Helen into the back of the police car, Nick Cutter couldn’t help but question who was really at the helm with this fiasco. Claudia had gone behind his back on this, Stephen and the other two on “his” team seemed as clueless about goings-on as he was, and the Home Office was jumping in on it all without any real idea of what they were messing with.

Helen was definitely no longer the woman she used to be, but Cutter knew that this kind of action was just the sort that would make her clam up and turn dangerous.

“They’re going to screw up all of our chances and they don’t even care,” he muttered, turning to the younger three. “Head back to the university, get ready for any fallout that might come of this. I’ve got folks to talk to.”

“Sure you’ll be alright?” Stephen asked, his arms crossed but his face soft in concern.

Cutter nodded, waving them off as he marched toward his car. Claudia had some answering to do, that was his first goal. Pulling his keys out he muttered under his breath, “Drag her off and don’t even ask the one person who knew her best how to deal with her properly. She’ll run them in circles; couldn’t have left her be? She’d show up again eventually, maybe more willing!”

“The government always thinks they know best and that all big new secrets need to be wrapped up and tied off in a pretty bow to cover it over.”

As he’d been about to climb into his car, Cutter nearly smacked his head as he jerked up, looking over toward the figure leaning against the back of his vehicle. A figure who had definitely not been there seconds before.

A young man, mid-twenties maybe, dark brown cropped hair and an unassuming outfit under a slick black, blue-and-silver edged duster that definitely caught attention if his sudden appearance hadn’t. He was watching the almost cleaned up scene nearby with passive intensity, like he already had the entire story behind it down but still looking for details left behind. But, as soon as he saw that Cutter was staring at him he looked back with a friendly but calculating smile.

“The hell? Who are you?” Cutter blurted out, fist curling in a defensive response.

The young man took note of the fist and snorted, straightening up and holding out a hand in greeting instead. “Sorry for the scare, but I wanted to catch you alone first without having to deal with the Home Office crew,” he said, and now Cutter noted the distinctly not-British accent he carried. “Name’s Hawken, should be an easy one to remember; consider me a fellow mix-up with expertise in outlandish situations.”

The hand remained out, but wasn’t taken as Cutter still wasn’t certain of this new character. Clearly, Hawken got the message a moment later when he sighed and finally retracted it. “I get it, stranger pops out of nowhere with cryptic words right after a big can of worms opens up, so I’ll explain a little more: I’m here with a handful of friends who would like to lend a hand with keeping all three sides of the mess you’re dealing with from driving each other insane, or worse, and help you deal with the cause of the mess too.”

Cutter still wasn’t buying it, and crossed his arms to signal that message; this guy knew just a little too much from way too out of the blue. “How about you level with me honestly,” he parried. “How do you know what’s going on here and what agency sent you down to stick your hands in?”

All that got was a smirk and a shake of the head. “No, no,” Hawken waved off, “like I said, me and a few friends; we’re not part of an agency, we just have a really bad habit of getting ourselves caught in strange goings-on. I know enough to talk to you here because, at least in part, the internet isn’t silent and neither are people who think no one else is enjoying a walk in the woods.” He shrugged, and pulled a card out of his pocket, writing something down on it before handing it toward Cutter. “We’ll be dealing with the anomalies too -that’s what you’re calling them, right?- but we’d rather it be alongside you and your team; sharing of a burden as it were. Call us if you want to talk, Home Office can’t trace this one, otherwise we’ll probably be getting in touch again soon enough.”

Finally deciding at last that it would be safe to just take the card, the professor grabbed the offered slip and looked at it; nothing but a couple of names and a phone number. Despite the boy’s claims, if he was up to something Cutter was sure that Claudia and Lester had some sort of contact who could pull info from this. If he was sincere on the other hand, well, a few more hands to keep said government pair from taking way too much control too, and with as little as any of them knew about the anomalies that might not be a bad thing either.

Especially if Helen did as she often did recently and slipped away through everyone’s plans.

“Alright, I’ll think about it, but right now I’ve got more serious…” Cutter started to reply, before trailing off when he looked back up to an empty street. He started, stepping forward to look around the back of his car and either way along the street. Nothing, save another sticky note attached to his window: ‘P.S. I’m particularly fond of reptiles, so if you get called for anything to be looked after, there’s another house to consider.’

“Bloody strange,” he muttered, finally moving to sit down in his car and fiddling with his keys and the notes. As he was about to say, he did have a bigger issue than this guy’s proposal to deal with, but he figured it wise to at least let Stephen know about the new development. Pulling out his cell phone as he started up the car, he hit a speed-dial and started off down the road. Once it picked up, he spoke, “Yeah, Stephen, another problem’s come up that we should keep an eye out for: I was approached just now by someone, a young man who obviously knows about the anomalies but said he wasn’t government…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, we can really get the fun started...so many little scenes and tidbits I want to write up, hopefully I can fit them all where they work with the story and also remain amusing.   
> As I'm pretty sure I said last chapter, this will probably be a slower updating tale, but there will be updates always to be expected so if you're liking it so far, don't tune out any time soon! We've only just started the festivities after all.  
> Until next time, HawkTooth out!


	3. Bunch'a Dodos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back with another chapter! And sooner than I thought...

Hiccup took the binoculars, watching the raid below with a smirk. “All that firepower for a Burmese python,” he snickered, before handing the binoculars to Astrid and looking over at me. “Think Cutter will take us up on your offer, or were you more cryptic than you should have been?”

I looked over the edge of the rooftop we were on as the raiding party shuffled into the apartment across the street. Poor woman surely wasn’t expecting what she’d found that afternoon, though she probably could have avoided a military pincer movement had she just said in her phone call that it was a snake, and not some mystery monster creature. “I was about as clear as I could be without explaining outright how we know about them,” I replied. “As he drove off I caught him calling Stephen about us rather than Claudia though; I doubt we’ll hear anything at all until they lose Helen again however, at least; you know, when we show up again. Takes something a little more drastic to make guys like these seek radically new help, especially considering the Home Office crew is still new to them too.”

“I don’t blame them,” Astrid commented, still watching through the binoculars. “I mean, shocking as all this would be on its own, new faces out of the blue is more than a little suspicious.” She looked up and glanced over at me for a moment, and smiled. “Especially in your case, you and your foreboding black coat and tendency to disappear at will.” Looking back through the binoculars again, she noted, “Oh, here comes Cutter. Probably heading off now to try and get Claudia to let him help with Helen.”

I looked down, and sure enough Cutter had come back out of the apartment complex, clambering into the black SUV’s every government agency seems to love. “It’s what I like to wear, can’t help what others think about it,” I muttered, looking down at my coat before lifting my head back up. “Anyway, since they haven’t called yet I’m guessing Holly and the Wildes haven’t found much of interest either; you guys good to tail Connor and company, figure out where their houses are actually located for when we need to say hi later? I’m gonna go find the others and drop in at the Home Office.”

“Yeah, we should be good,” Astrid affirmed. She reached down and pulled a brochure packet out of one pocket, waving it for a moment before putting it back. “While you were chatting up Cutter we grabbed the bus routes and locations of car rentals and dealers; didn’t see any vehicles at the house so I thought that might be useful whenever we can’t use the dragons.”

I nodded and gave a thumbs-up, before morphing and cloaking myself. “Yeah, a car for everyone without wings of their own is probably a good thing to get,” I agreed. “Anyway, well, I’ll bet we all meet up again in a couple of hours at the stadium, so I’ll see you guys there.” Then I dropped off the building’s edge, taking to the wind and activating my com unit. “Hey Holly, Judy, Nick: heading your way. Having fun?”

“Most spying’s like war,” Holly’s voice shot back with a bit of salt in it. “99% waiting, 1% action. So, no; we need something good to happen already.”

“Yeah, I get it. Should have a little fun soon though, no worries.”

* * *

Too many distractions. Helen, Lester, Claudia, that mystery new face from the street…none of it was helping Cutter keep his head on straight, and right now he needed it to be.

“Look, I can’t say how truthful she’s being right now,” he explained as he and Claudia walked down the steps toward the Home Office ground floor. “But I also could say the same about you and your crew; that I had to debate for half an hour with you and Lester just to get him to stop using the egotistic authority approach and let me try and get some straight answers we can use isn’t helpful to either of our sides here.” He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and crossed his arms, looking pointedly at Claudia.

For her part, she sighed and nodded. “He’s concerned with just keeping a lid on the whole mess, you know that,” she replied, gesturing vaguely upward through the building. “We just need to do so in the smartest way, which is why I want your help here and not to run you off. You know Helen the best, and you heard what she said up there; how much do you trust, and how much do you think is a diversion?”

Cutter let out a long-suffering sigh and reached up to rub his brows. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “That’s the biggest problem. Six years ago I knew her, but the woman I knew wouldn’t just run off into the unknown without talking to me about it first, let alone only half-care if I rejected her asking me to join her. This woman wants me there with her, but is also perfectly fine saying nothing helpful as long as she can gallivant about again.” He glanced off to the side, scowling in contemplation, before looking back to Claudia. “I think we have to err on the side of caution here,” he decided with no small amount of trepidation in the words. “If she is telling the truth, then in less than an hour central London will have a problem that no agency is going to be big enough to cover up, and if she’s not then we’ll have heads enough present to keep her contained.”

“Claudia nodded. “I think I agree,” she said, “and I’ll try to get Lester to listen. Let your team know then, and we’ll get moving immediately. Hopefully we can all build some mutual trust off of this.”

“Yeah, that’ll be the day,” Cutter muttered, glancing off to the side again…and then doing a double-take. That boy…he had just been standing there, hadn’t he?

_What’s he doing here? And where’d he just go?_

Claudia noticed, looking past Cutter to try and spot whatever he had seen, but finding nothing out of the ordinary. Then she looked back at him. “Something amiss?”

Cutter blinked, shaking his head and meeting her gaze, though his eyes kept flicking to the side. “No, no,” he dismissed, waving a hand and turning to leave. “Just a long day I think, is all. Tell Helen that we’ll follow her directions, and let me know where the supposed new anomaly is. I’ll meet you there.”

Claudia looked on, a worried expression working its way up, but soon she just shrugged and turned back up the stairway. Cutter, meanwhile, stepped outside and then leaned against the wall for a moment, rubbing the sides of his face. That young man, whoever he was, had definitely been standing just off in one of the side hallways on the main floor. He’d winked when Cutter had made brief eye contact, and then just as quickly when the professor had looked back he hadn’t been there. He hadn’t been alone this time either, another trio of unfamiliar faces leaning against the window alongside him that Cutter had not managed to get a good look at. They’d disappeared too, right at the same time, and there wasn’t anything obvious that they could have hidden behind in that short period.

“Who the hell are you?” Cutter groaned to himself. “And what do you want?”

* * *

The stadium was pretty hard to miss once they knew where it was. Luckily flying cloaked behind Cutter and the column of government blacks meant they were basically pointed right in the direction they needed to head, and in the process they all got a bird’s-eye view of the city as a whole.

Nick still had questions about their current methods though, and he could tell Judy did too, as they were both staring hard at the back of the head of the Shadowracer they were presently sitting on. “I mean, it was amusing and all, watching his face contort like that when we blinked out of view, but was it really necessary stepping inside when we were just going to follow him right back out?” he asked.

Hawken didn’t answer right away, but Holly did. “Prankster that you are I’m shocked you didn’t insist on more,” she prodded, reaching over to poke him in the shoulder. “Come on, we’re here to have fun too even if we’re trying to literally live this life a bit. Besides, I don’t think we’ll be doing much outright disappearing this time.” Her lips pursed, and she turned to look down at the back of Hawken’s head. “That does make me think though: we can’t just walk into thin air every time. We have access to a couple of cars, perhaps?”

Hawken glanced back and up at them, and nodded. “Hiccup and Astrid were already looking into it apparently. We can probably arrange something soon, especially as money is not going to be an object for us while in here. Just remember that the British drive on the left side of the road.”

“Yeah I know. Weirdos.”

The dragon snorted, before glancing downward. “Alright, gonna land by the parking lot there since it’s the emptiest. You guys jump off, Nick and Judy don’t forget the holograms, and…well, see if you can’t convince them to let you help round up a few birds, eh?”

“And what will you be doing?” Nick inquired. His tail flicked as they banked downward, and he leaned forward into the drop. “Don’t want to be seen again, or…”

“No, Hiccup and Astrid will be here shortly as they tail Connor and Stephen, so I’m gonna meet up with them and send them in, then maybe see if I can’t spot Tom and Duncan and keep them from nabbing that getaway bird that was the problem in the episode.”

“Ah. Will kind of wrap up everything then until the next portal opens if you succeed though.”

“True…but would also give us more time to get the folks here accustomed to us.”

There was a guard posted by the entrance when they landed unseen, trying but almost comically failing to look nonchalant, but as out of the way as this back entrance was he didn’t look very expectant of any activity going on. Nick smirked at the jump the guy did when they landed and sent up a gust of air and debris, before they paused and waited for an opening for him, Judy, and Holly to head in.

They didn’t have to wait long as it turned out, as the guard got a message through his earpiece that the two mammals managed to pick up on. As he turned and headed in, Judy relayed, “Sounds like this Helen person got away.”

“No time to waste then,” Holly said, jumping off and sprinting for the door. “They’ll get a photo of the spaghetti junction inside the anomaly and then the dodos are going to come running out. Area’s clear, come on!” She held the door open as Nick and Judy also exited Hawken’s cloaking cover and threw up their own holograms, the three of them ducking inside.

The stadium was empty, as expected, but Nick and Judy’s ears both perked up under their holograms at the sounds of voices off deep in the halls. Nick scented the air, trying to detect if anything had come wandering about yet, but he caught nothing but people and stale popcorn drifting by.

“So I don’t think anything’s come running out yet,” he said, before looking to Judy to confirm direction and pointed. “This way.”

“We’ll have a minute or two before they do come running out,” Holly muttered quietly. “Just enough to actually find where the kitchens are at, probably.” She took the lead once a general path was pointed out, and with her being the only actual human in the group, the other two watched her carefully for clues in how to walk “normally” while under hologram (since, even bipedal as they are, they knew that they still moved fairly animalistically on instinct) and hoped that they looked convincing enough.

The door they’d come through led into a maintenance hall that ran along the back of the building, with the main public hallway through another door a short ways along. Past that and around one corner, Holly peeked around cautiously, before backpedaling and flattening against the wall, the Narnians following suit. “Found the kitchen entrance, I’m guessing,” she whispered. “Guard at the door. Probably gonna have to wait for more chaos in order to get in.”

“Wait, hold on, do we actually want to go in right now though?” Judy pondered. “Isn’t part of the point that we keep the birds from getting out of the stadium in general?”

Holly raised a finger, then paused and lowered it again. “Good point,” she replied, “though from what I recall of the episode, they went out to the back doors of the kitchen, not into the stadium halls.”

“We’re here already though,” Nick now reminded sardonically, peeking around Holly himself to take a slight gander toward the guard at the door. Only one, and he did not look happy to be there. “Being here, could be we’ve already altered the events a little; I don’t know how Zipeau set up this world or if ripple effects like that can happen, but…maybe.”

“Also possibly true I guess,” Holly admitted. “Either way, we’re going to need”-

SQUAWK! CRASH! RATTLE! SQUAWK!

“A bit of chaos?” Judy drawled humorously as they all stuck their heads just around the corner, watching the guard whirl and dash into the kitchen entry behind him where a whole lot of noise was being generated. “Guess that’s our cue.”

Holly grinned, but turned on her com first before doing anything else. “Astrid, Hiccup, you here yet?”

“Yeah, just got to the stadium,” Hiccup responded in all their ears. “Public transport was a little slower than Connor’s car. Where you at?”

“About to walk into the kitchen where all the fun and chaos is happening right now. Dodos are through; see you shortly I guess?”

“Probably, if we don’t have to talk down any soldiers blocking the way. Good luck, you know our backgrounds if you have to talk out of a mess.”

The com clicked off, and after one more look around the trio skirted across the hall and through the door. Chittering, squawking noises immediately got louder alongside a whole lot of shouting, and several familiar voices could be heard amongst the yells. There was a short hall between them and the actual kitchen complex, and as they crept forward, there was a nearby crash…and a large, fluffy, flightless pigeon came barreling down the corridor toward them.

“Whoa, look out!” Nick exclaimed, spreading his arms and feeling his cloaked tail puff out at the surprise. “Geez, they’re bigger than I thought they would be!”

“Largest dove there ever was!” Holly commented as she grabbed a collapsible baton that had been stored away on her side and extended it. The dodo balked at their presence momentarily, before bobbing its head to try and look for a way past them. It focused on Judy, the smallest of the three (even in the hologram she was presenting), and started speed-waddling forward again. The three closed ranks, arms spread as Judy made it clear that she wasn’t going to be scared out of the way, and Holly reached forward with the baton to halt the bird and push it back toward the kitchen. The dodo complained loudly, bobbing and ducking to try and get past the baton or spot a way around the three “people” it saw still, but as they advanced it finally figured out that this wasn’t the way to go and turned to dash back into the kitchen. Holly and the two disguised mammals followed.

The rest of the room wasn’t doing really any better, people spread out and running about as they tried to corral a half-dozen plus birds back toward the walk-in fridge, but with the still-unnoticed trio blocking one exit the dozen or so people inside were starting to get a handle on the mess within. The three newcomers paused in awe though as they took in for the first time the source of the insanity within the meat locker that everyone else was funneling the dodos back toward.

Nick and Judy could both feel it fighting to warp their holograms, but even Holly could pick up the magnetic pulses coming off the shattered hole in space-time glowing ahead of them. The spinning halo of glass-like dimensional shards throwing the internal light of the rip around the walls mesmerized them all for a moment, before the squawk of another dodo near their feet snapped them out of it.

“My god, the amount of energy that thing must be using up,” Nick mused, before focusing back on the bird once again challenging them. “We’ll get to that later though; you need to get your fluffy butt back through first, and then”-

“Hey! What are you doing here?!”

Their heads snapped over to one of the military guards who’d finally noticed them, and with his exclamation the gazes of the rest of the people in the kitchen turned their way too: Cutter, Claudia, Abbey, Stephen, everyone they recognized from the show.

“Keeping your mess of extinct pigeons from running through the rest of the building, duh,” Holly snapped without missing a beat however, using her baton to recommence shooing the bird toward the anomaly. “Care to help…oh, no.”

The dodo dodged instead to the side along one of the corridors between the work counters, but only made it a couple of steps before it suddenly staggered, gave a strange gurgle and a shudder, and then slumped to the floor.

“Well,” Holly muttered, backing up a step, “guess that one’s not getting back through. Uh, nobody get too close without protective equipment.”

Cutter signaled the others present to close the doors to the locker, before walking up to the trio with no small amount of suspicion and latent irritation in his eyes. He glanced over the counter at the dead bird, calling to Abbey, “Get some gloves on and bag it, we’ll figure out what was wrong with it at the lab,” before returning his glare to the newcomers. “Alright, just who the hell are you all and how did you get in here?”

“Well, we walked in through that door,” Nick responded innocently with a pointing finger, before dodging Judy’s punch.

Holly smirked at them before donning a more serious expression and facing Cutter with a confident stance, eyes passing between him, Claudia who was also approaching, and the various guards in the room. “Holly Carlton; you already met my brother. This is Nicholas Wilde, and Judith Wilde-Hopps. Not like we expected you all to welcome us with open arms –I didn’t prompt a handshake because I’m assuming you’d just leave me hanging- but call us an extra helping hand.” She nodded toward the meat locker, then paused as two more people popped in through the same door they’d come in by, Hiccup and Astrid. “Ah, and the rest of our group just in time: Hiccup and Astrid Haddock. Nice timing guys.”

“Sorry, place is a little confusing,” Astrid commented, before they too both made a double-take at the flickers of light still coming through the crack in the meat locker doors.

While they were distracted, Holly continued. “As I was saying, a little outside help; we’re uh, ‘proficient’ in experience with dangerous animals and supernatural mystery stuff, let’s say.”

“And just how did you come to learn about all this that’s happening here?” Claudia asked skeptically, stepping up beside Cutter as she signaled the guards to go back to the positions they were supposed to be at. She sent a suspicious glance too at Cutter, putting the pieces together about his odd behavior earlier, and then turned to where Abbey, Stephen, and Connor were trying to bag up the dead bird. “Was there a leak? They met one of you already?”

“What, you think England is the only place with odd goings-on?” Astrid cut in, taking the attention away from the research team as she refocused and jostling Hiccup to do the same. “If the accents didn’t give it away, we’re not originally from around here, but stories get out when weird fiascos happen. The ‘monster in the forest’ one from a few years ago for example, we follow things like that and there were enough similar internet clips from around here that we came in to see what might have been going on, and what we could do.” She glanced at Holly, who smiled slightly; it was good that there was more than one decent storyteller in the group who’d thought this through beforehand. “Admittedly we haven’t in-person ‘seen’ this particular mess until today, but if the birds that just ran in here are any indication,” she gestured toward the bagged dead one, “well, our expertise might be useful. Where one extinct animal shows up I suspect others could too, right?”

Claudia and Cutter glanced between each other, before Cutter nodded. “I’m going to go with Abbey to see what’s gone on with this one,” he said with a nod also to the dead animal, “and Connor and Stephen, stay here and see what you can figure out from the pictures, then head to the university. We’ll meet you there.”

“Wait, what about…them?” Connor asked, gesturing at Holly and company.

Cutter looked at that group again before shrugging and pointing a thumb toward Claudia. “Interference gets to be the government’s work,” he said. “Considering the one approached me alone first, seems they wanted to avoid proper channels, and they know just a bit too much to just be picking up internet stories –and Claudia, I’ll tell you about the other guy that’s not here after we deal with the dodo- so they can judge what to do with them.” He sent one last look at the new arrivals, Holly catching reservations in his eyes against what he’d just said, but then he huffed and turned, he and Abbey heading for the other corridor leading to the kitchen exit. Holly watched them go while the others turned to look back at Claudia.

As the departing pair passed by Connor’s backpack sitting on the floor though, Holly noticed the keychain tracker was already gone. “Oh, crap,” she muttered, before speaking up. “Look, discussion’s good and all, but was there anyone blocking that hallway the whole time?” She pointed at the outdoor exit.

Claudia followed her gesture before glancing at each of the guards and civilians still in the room. When all she got back was uncertainty, she clearly became unnerved. “Apparently it’s a possibility not,” she admitted. “Why?”

“Because,” Judy said, picking up on what Holly was concerned about, “you might then have just lost a bird or two.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be honest, no idea when I'll be getting the next chapter for this out; trying to crank out some writing for the other main tale in order to meet a deadline to celebrate Zootopia's anniversary next week (and my birthday; how I enjoy that happenstance :D), and have a couple deadlines to meet for new educational pieces for my personal business also within the next week, on top of grad class requirements, so it's gonna be...busy for a while, and I expect to feel a bit burnt out afterward. If you wanna help me carve out some more time though, you can join me in support here: www.patreon.com/hcarlton  
> In the meantime though, we can enjoy ruminating on the image of the Riders chasing dodos through hallways and all the chaos that would bring along.  
> Until next time: HawkTooth out!


End file.
